Critical eye + Sebastian Faulks | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/series/criticaleye+sebastianfaulks
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Book reviews roundup: How to Build a Girl, Village of Secrets and A Broken Worldhttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/11/critical-eye-book-review-roundup
What the critics thought of How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran, Village of Secrets by Caroline Moorehead and A&nbsp;Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War edited by Sebastian Faulks and Hope Wolf<p>"Any novel that begins with its 14-year-old narrator masturbating in the same bed as her sleeping little brother can't be all bad. Indeed, Caitlin Moran's spirited coming-of-age tale romps from&nbsp;strength to strength. After her popular essayistic memoir <em>How to Be&nbsp;a&nbsp;Woman</em>, Moran's first novel for adults,<a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780091949006" title=""> How to Build a Girl</a>, follows the&nbsp;remaking of Johanna Morrigan, a&nbsp;pudgy, smart-mouthed teenager from the West Midlands". <strong>Lionel Shriver</strong> in&nbsp;the Times&nbsp;pronounced herself "a Moran fan … At 39, the author can still summon the raw, jangled experience of&nbsp;being a teenager." "There's a lot about masturbation here – as much an&nbsp;age of&nbsp;coming as a coming of age novel", noted an equally admiring <strong>Julie Burchill</strong> in the Spectator: "She writes with breathtaking brio, like a great professional hoofer who has been&nbsp;toe-tapping since tot-hood but has never grown tired of performing: very much a 'Ta-da! – see what I did there?' type of writer." But <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/sorry-caitlin-but-this-isnt-how-to-be-a-novelist-liz-jones-reviews-caitlin-morans-how-to-build-a-girl-9564193.html" title=""><strong>Liz Jones</strong> in&nbsp;the Evening Standard</a> didn't agree: "The problem is, this novel has no depth or pathos. Even though it's based on what she knows, there is no sense that this new girl is real … It's all&nbsp;quite glib … Moran hasn't stretched herself … It would be easy to give this book a good review … But I feel it's my job … to warn young women when I think they're wasting their money."</p><p><a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780701186418" title=""><em>Village of Secrets</em></a> by Caroline Moorehead, an account of Chambon-sur-Lignon in France, the "remote mountain village", as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10943715/Village-of-Secrets-Defying-the-Nazis-in-Vichy-France-by-Caroline-Moorehead-review-riven-with-complexity.html" title=""><strong>Sinclair McKay</strong> wrote in the Daily Telegraph</a>, "that provided sanctuary and escape for numbers of Jewish people … is riven with complexity". It is "also about ownership of history. Moorehead analyses how, in recent years, the story&nbsp;… has been fluffed up as a sort of&nbsp;national comfort blanket – a beacon of&nbsp;redemptive light in Vichy darkness … at the expense of difficult truth … If anything, Moorehead's pacy, headlong narrative, zigzagging across the war years and different territories with so many piercing vignettes and close detail, packs too much in and the structure suffers. A longer book would have given more room for reflection …" <strong>Alan Judd</strong> in the Spectator praised the book for pointing out "the brute facts. France was one of only two sovereign states (the other was Bulgaria) to do the Nazis' work for them, rounding up and deporting over 150,000 – half of them Jews – to death or slavery. From the start, Vichy 'consistently offered more than Germany asked for, more and also sooner'."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/11/critical-eye-book-review-roundup">Continue reading...</a>BooksCultureCaitlin MoranSebastian FaulksFri, 11 Jul 2014 16:00:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/11/critical-eye-book-review-roundupPhotograph: Murdo Macleod/Guardian'She writes with breathtaking brio' … Caitlin Moran. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the GuardianPhotograph: Murdo Macleod/Guardian'She writes with breathtaking brio' … Caitlin Moran. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the GuardianGuardian Staff2014-07-11T16:00:01ZCritical eye: book reviews rounduphttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/28/critical-eye-book-reviews-roundup
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie and A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks<p>The big book of the week was Salman Rushdie's memoir <em>Joseph Anton</em>, which <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/9558297/Joseph-Anton-by-Salman-Rushdie-review.html" title=""><strong>AN Wilson</strong> in the Sunday Telegraph </a>described as "most peculiar". He didn't like it: "Literature's 'importance' gets overshadowed by a toxic sense of a writer's status as a celebrity ... as the narrative continues, this book conveys a bewildering emptiness … the memoir is inordinately long, and the drama of the fatwa … gets swamped by a sort of literary luvvie-dom." According to a more friendly<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d35ae2ea-0278-11e2-8cf8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27PDQ4tum" title=""> <strong>John Lloyd</strong> in the Financial Times</a>, "Scores are settled, but kindnesses and courage are recognised and there is a wealth of anecdote … <em>Joseph Anton</em> is overlong and too richly endowed with famed authors and starry events: Rushdie, as he writes, loves to be loved. But as a story of refusal to be cowed the books speaks to the heart, and to conscience." For <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2012/09/salman-rushdie-versus-mullocracy" title=""><strong>Colin McCabe</strong> in the New Statesman</a>, the "story Rushdie tells is never less than gripping. And there are moments … when he writes as well as he has ever done." In the Times <strong>David Aaronovitch</strong> wrote about Rushdie's enemies as appeasers: "There is an honour roll in <em>Joseph Anton</em> and on it are the names of people such as Michael Foot, Susan Sontag, Harold Pinter, Edward Said, Gita Sahgal and Christopher Hitchens." But when it comes to "those non-Muslims who attacked Rushdie … you see the same arguments and psychology that would have justified collaboration with totalitarianism". <strong>Nicholas Shakespeare</strong>, in the Daily Telegraph, was alone in arguing that Rushdie's portrait of his second wife Marianne Wiggins "is a masterpiece … It is to Rushdie's infinite credit that he can be candid and searing about his weaknesses and destructive appetites". Shakespeare concluded that though "awfully long, solipsistic and of necessity self-serving, <em>Joseph Anton</em> is also funny, painfully moving and absolutely necessary to read." "He has harsh words for all his wives," pointed out <strong>Robert Harris</strong> in the Sunday Times, whose overall reaction was mixed: "Not the least of the many pleasures … is its revelation of what it is like suddenly to be locked inside a bulletproof cocoon." Yet the book "somehow diminishes him. For a writer who has insisted on the novelist's right to offend, he displays an extraordinary sensitivity to criticism … there is too much name-dropping … too much tedious boastfulness … and, occasionally, just too much information … whether it is the brilliance of genius that shines from him or merely the charisma of security-protected celebrity is a question this memoir leaves hanging."</p><p>Sebastian Faulks's <em>A Possible Life</em> "is divided into five sections," wrote <strong>Lucy Atkins</strong> in the Sunday Times, "each set in a different era and country with apparently no connection … It is structured like a book of short stories. It reads like a book of stories. But it is a novel. And the challenge, here, is to work out why." It isn't a "comfortable read. It stops and starts and throws up more questions than it answers. But in the end it does what any good novel should – it unsettles, it moves, and it forces us to question who we are." The <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-possible-life-by-sebastian-faulks-8165766.html" title="">Independent on Sunday's <strong>Doug Johnstone</strong></a> was decided: "Let's get the minor gripe out of the way at the start. This is not a novel." Yet though not a "happy book" it is "probably Faulks's most intriguing fictional offering". <strong>Jane Shilling</strong> in the Sunday Telegraph concluded that the book is about "the chances and choices that shape the lives we have. It is the kind of large, portentous theme that could have produced a grandstanding novel. But Faulks addresses it with a finely observed humanity."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/28/critical-eye-book-reviews-roundup">Continue reading...</a>Salman RushdieBooksCultureSebastian FaulksAutobiography and memoirFictionFri, 28 Sep 2012 21:55:08 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/28/critical-eye-book-reviews-roundupGuardian Staff2012-09-28T21:55:08ZCritical eye: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, William Golding by John Carey, and A Week in December by Sebastian Faulkshttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/05/hornby-golding-carey-faulks-december
<p>"Nick Hornby is a wonderfully assured&nbsp;writer, and <em>Juliet, Naked</em> is stuffed with incidental pleasures and engaging sidebar stories . . . But it is also a novel that stays safely within set parameters, and therefore ends up equal to, but not greater than, the sum of its parts,"<strong> Adam Lively</strong> said in the Sunday Times. <strong>Tom Gatti</strong> in the Times also concluded that "the novel doesn't add up to anything more than the sum of its parts . . . Although he writes well about blinkered online communities .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. keeping his characters up to speed with technology only results in tedious descriptions of ripping CDs and emailing pictures." "When Hornby tells us what's going on in a character's head, it's not that we don't believe him, more that it leaves us too little to do," <strong>Julie Myerson</strong> objected in the Observer. "I wanted gaps, I wanted subtext, I wanted uncertainty . . . Next time I'd love to read less about what he's already decided and more about what he still needs to find out."</p><p>"Golding deserves rediscovery, and if he gets it, then this biography – sympathetic without being idolatrous, detailed without becoming boring, learned, witty, insightful and humane: a model of its kind – will be in large measure responsible," <strong>Robert Harris</strong> declared in the Sunday Times, reviewing John Carey's <em>William Golding</em>. "The self-contempt that Golding defined as the clue to his character pays dividends for Carey the textual scholar, who here unearths a series of early drafts for published novels or extracts from projects unjustifiably abandoned," <strong>Peter Conrad </strong>wrote in the Observer. "As a biographer, he may not have uncovered Golding's darkest, deepest secrets, but at least his detective work has grubbed up these intriguing, revealing relics." "Funny, generous, humane and unsparing, Carey has a sharpness of eye and shapeliness of phrase that perfectly match his subject," <strong>Robert Douglas-Fairhurst</strong> said in the Daily Telegraph. "The Golding who emerges from these pages is a creature of paradoxes. He was at once a shaggy mystic . . . and an ordinary bloke who enjoyed <em>Carry On Up the Khyber</em>." "One of the great advantages of Carey's treatment is its unrelenting focus on the way in which a writer's life is lived at bedrock – how much he gets for his books, what the editor thinks and what the critics say – and the inner demons to which this solitary existence is prey," <strong>DJ Taylor </strong>observed in the Independent. "Thus we learn, to nobody's very great surprise, that he was a depressive, a drunk whose intake makes, say, the late Kingsley Amis look like the merest tap-room trifler."</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/05/hornby-golding-carey-faulks-december">Continue reading...</a>FictionBiographyNick HornbyWilliam GoldingSebastian FaulksBooksCultureFri, 04 Sep 2009 23:05:32 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/05/hornby-golding-carey-faulks-decemberGuardian Staff2009-09-04T23:05:32Z